Parent: Flyers hope Downie gives them an edge

The Flyers’ Steve Downie, front, checks Washington’s Steve Olesky into the boards during the first period of Friday’s game at the Wells Fargo Center. Downie is one of many ex-Flyers to become Flyers a second time. (AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

Steve Downie’s going to have a reputation. Any guy that goes after a teammate is simply asking for that.

But Downie’s flip-out on the junior hockey practice ice several years ago on a teammate who had purportedly offered no willingness to participate in a hazing incident is a thing of the past. So too the kind of dangerous, leaping hit to the head of Ottawa’s Dean McAmmond that cost him a 20-game suspension just as Downie’s NHL career was beginning.

“That was seven years ago, (and) I was a little bit immature,” Downie said Friday. “But I still play the game hard and play the game with an edge. I still bring energy.”

Yet the word out of Colorado is such that the knee injury suffered last season was still impacting Downie’s skating. And there’s always the worry that Downie may still cross the edge at times. He had an incident during training camp with Avalanche captain Gabriel Landeskog that didn’t put him on good terms with new coach Patrick Roy, who should understand edgy psychosis better than most.

So bringing back Downie wasn’t so difficult, as he became the 357th Flyer in franchise history to enjoy a second Philadelphia term (editor’s note: that number is a guess, but hey, it’s probably not too far off).

Essentially the Flyers were getting nothing offensively out of Max Talbot, who might know how to kill penalties well, but has the quiet critics out there wondering if he has any meaningful hockey left in the tank. So acquiring Downie in the last year of his contract is a cheap emergency move to try to bolster the offense — and at the same time try to stick a boot into Claude Giroux’s lower-padded zones.

The Flyers as presently constituted are far from a championship team. But without Giroux scoring consistently — or in the case of this season’s first month, score at all — they won’t be able to fool even themselves that they’re good enough to earn a playoff spot.

First, Paul Holmgren told his personally appointed coaching savior Craig Berube to put Vinny Lecavalier next to the captain to try to get him going. Now they’ve added a guy with a harried history of taking penalties and playing edgy (and occasionally more than that) hockey who also happens to be skilled at digging out pucks out of crowded slot areas.

Giroux probably doesn’t have a clear idea what he’s supposed to be for this team. He’s a fine defensive forward with a passing touch and superb shot when given time to uncork it. But he always seems caught in a classic struggle between playmaker, slow shooter and unsure leader, trying to grasp how to group the three hockey personalties.

Steve Downie? He might work his edgy game to effect, free up a few more pucks and have Giroux and/or Lecavalier score a few more goals. It’s really not a bad idea.

He won’t help add much balance and consistency to other Flyers forward lines that lack both of those things in great measure.

But then, this was a cheap, for-the-moment kind of move. It can’t hurt, so long as Downie is coaxed into playing “under control.” But at the very least, it was an acknowledgement that no real fix is currently available for an offense in need of major repairs.

Jaromir Jagr claimed he didn’t know he set a record Tuesday with his 119th game-winning goal. Then again, that’s never a surprise for the NHL, which often has no idea what is in its statistical records or rule books that’s halfway accurate or otherwise.

Besides, some stat keepers say Gordie Howe had 121 of those game-winning things, though the record wasn’t official when he played, so Gordo is going to get uncredited in the record book.

Anyway, it’s believed Phil Esposito, another expert in psychotic edginess, had registered 118 game-winning goals back in his heyday. We’ll call that the record just broken. Somebody want to call Espo and tell him that?

As for Jaro, he had the appropriate response to the whole mess: “I didn’t know I was, so I didn’t know I wasn’t.”

Right.

NOTES and QUOTES: This just in: Los Angeles has put Jeff Carter on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. No, that doesn’t mean the Flyers won that trade. ... Jake Voracek on the news that Alex Ovechkin was injured, so was unavailable to play against the Flyers Friday: “I don’t think it makes a difference at all. Most of the times when their best player doesn’t play, that sort of means they play even harder.”

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About the Author

Rob Parent is the Daily Times sports editor. He also covers the Flyers as well as writing an occasional column. Reach the author at rparent@delcotimes.com
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